Honorverse ramblings and musings

Vince wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:My advice, Cthia, is to put down Cauldron, and read the other books before starting it again. The Honorverse is best read in publication order, otherwise it doesn't make all that much sense.

Proper reading order should be:
1. On Basilisk Station (Georgia92)
2. Honor of the Queen (June 93)
3. The Short Victorious War (Apr 94)
4. Field of Dishonor (Dec 94)
5. Flag In Exile (Sep 95)
6. Honor Among Enemies (Feb 96)
7. In Enemy Hands (Jul 97)
8. More Than Honor (Jan 98)(Anthology)
9. Echoes of Honor (Oct 98)
10. World of Honor (Feb 99)(Anthology)
11. Ashes of Victory (Mar 00)
12. Changer of Worlds (Mar 01)(Anthology)
13. War of Honor (Oct 02)
14. The Service of the Sword (Apr 03)(Anthology)
15. Crown of Slaves (Sep03)
16. The Shadow of Saganami (Oct 04)
17. At All Costs (Nov 05)
18. Storm from the Shadows (Mar 09)
19. Torch of Freedom (Nov 09)
20. Mission of Honor (June 10)
21. In Fire Forged (Feb 11) (Anthology)
22. A Rising Thunder (Mar 12)
23. Shadow of Freedom (Mar 13)
24. House of Steel (May 13) (Compendium)
25. Beginnings (July 13) (Anthology)
26. Cauldron of Ghosts (Apr 14)

Publication order is definitely the best reading order for the Honorverse in the current time period. Also for any books in the Honorverse in any particular time period.

Read the short story Grayson Navy Letters Home (2012) in the Baen Free Stories 2012 collection before reading [edit] the short story [/edit] Obligated Service in the Beginnings anthology.

The young adult short story and novels of The Star Kingdom:

0. Honorverse Tech Bu9 in the Baen Free Stories 2011 collection.
1. A Beautiful Friendship
2. Fire Season
3. Treecat Wars

are centered on Stephanie Harrington and the Sphinx Forestry Service in the early days of the Star Kingdom and can be read at any time separately, but are not necessary to understand the current Honorverse.

The short story and novel in the Manticore Ascendant series:

0. A Call to Arms in the Beginnings anthology
1. A Call to Duty

are centered on Travis Long and the Royal Manticoran Navy in the early days of the Star Kingdom and can be read at any time separately. More novels are planned in this series.

Baen Free Stories collections are available ate Baen Ebooks in the Free Library.

-----

For more of the Ballroom perspective, I would add. "From the Highlands" from the anthlogies (forget which one) either before or concurrently with "War of Honor". That's the effective introduction of Helen Zilwicki as a young adult and gives the basis for Cathy and Anton's "chat" with Georgia Young.

-- Stewart

Vince wrote:snip...The young adult short story and novels of The Star Kingdom:

0. Honorverse Tech Bu9 in the Baen Free Stories 2011 collection.
1. A Beautiful Friendship
2. Fire Season
3. Treecat Wars

are centered on Stephanie Harrington and the Sphinx Forestry Service in the early days of the Star Kingdom and can be read at any time separately, but are not necessary to understand the current Honorverse.
Snip..

I would say Read the first part of the A Beautiful Friendship novel, then the Bu9 short story followed by The Stray short story, then continue with the rest of A Beautiful Friendship.

--snipping--

crewdude48 wrote:My advice, Cthia, is to put down Cauldron, and read the other books before starting it again. The Honorverse is best read in publication order, otherwise it doesn't make all that much sense.

Another choice -- if you're REALLY disciplined, and don't read all the stories in the collections when you pick up one of the books (or the Baen Free library containing most of them, and/or/plus the paid for ePubs), but instead want to do so chronologically. I occasionally read them this way just for fun. Rather than list them here's a link which does so better than I can. It even has the most current ones from Beginnings and House of Steel/ From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse#Stories_listed_by_internal_chronology

Enjoy, y'all.

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping--

crewdude48 wrote:My advice, Cthia, is to put down Cauldron, and read the other books before starting it again. The Honorverse is best read in publication order, otherwise it doesn't make all that much sense.

Another choice -- if you're REALLY disciplined, and don't read all the stories in the collections when you pick up one of the books (or the Baen Free library containing most of them, and/or/plus the paid for ePubs), but instead want to do so chronologically. I occasionally read them this way just for fun. Rather than list them here's a link which does so better than I can. It even has the most current ones from Beginnings and House of Steel/ From Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse#Stories_listed_by_internal_chronology

Enjoy, y'all.

I wouldn't do that for my first read, though; a lot of the more recently written short stories set in the 'past' of where the main Honorverse timeline was when they were written contain spoilers for novels set later in the timeline.

Okay, I was wondering, Filareta's Operation Raging Justice really didn't have a fair chance to succeed because there was no operational secrecy. Heck, the RMN knew the time, strength and even the name of the Operation.

What if operational secrecy would have been maintained? What would have been the outcome then?

And, the SLN only sent 427 ships. I've been admonished over an all-in SLN attack. Okay, but what if they really did throw 3000 ships at the RMN, and somehow were able to maintain operational secrecy? And this time they bring along CLACs.

Surprise! Let's get ready to rumbllllllllllle!!

No one, with the exception of Honor, really thought the RHN would roll the Battle of Manticore dice that way either.

****** *

I would really like to see the Solarian first string win a few battles with new technology, (setting the stage) leading up to a battle with Eighth fleet, then getting their asses spanked by Honor.

"My name is Sally. Mander to you, bitch!"

Did Honor just say that? That gal is really amped up!

cthia wrote:Okay, I was wondering, Filareta's Operation Raging Justice really didn't have a fair chance to succeed because there was no operational secrecy. Heck, the RMN knew the time, strength and even the name of the Operation.

What if operational secrecy would have been maintained? What would have been the outcome then?

And, the SLN only sent 427 ships. I've been admonished over an all-in SLN attack. Okay, but what if they really did throw 3000 ships at the RMN, and somehow were able to maintain operational secrecy? And this time they bring along CLACs.

Surprise! Let's get ready to rumbllllllllllle!!

No one, with the exception of Honor, really thought the RHN would roll the Battle of Manticore dice that way either.

****** *

I would really like to see the Solarian first string win a few battles with new technology, (setting the stage) leading up to a battle with Eighth fleet, then getting their asses spanked by Honor.

"My name is Sally. Mander to you, bitch!"

Did Honor just say that? That gal is really amped up!

The only problem with that attack is the numbers and ship types. Prior to Spindle, Battle Fleet had only around 2000 SDs in active service. And no CLACs or LACs at all. Even including Frontier Fleet, the SLN has no CLACs, no LACs and no more SDs in active service than what Battle Fleet had.

Vince wrote:The only problem with that attack is the numbers and ship types. Prior to Spindle, Battle Fleet had only around 2000 SDs in active service. And no CLACs or LACs at all. Even including Frontier Fleet, the SLN has no CLACs, no LACs and no more SDs in active service than what Battle Fleet had.

Quite so, Vince, along with perhaps 300 or so in Maintenace/Refurbishment, IIRC.

And few if any nations will throw everything they have in one 'win-or-lose' fight. Heck, even Haven, knowing that if they didn't defeat Manticore before Apollo was made common, they were toast, still retained SD(P)'s on the 'line' and in Home Fleet.

Now, that said, if Filareta had been delayed 3-4 months, he could have collected those other ships coming to Tasmania and had about 1,000 SD's (with screening elements), or nearly 50% of BF to throw at the Manties.

Not that it would have made much difference in the end, IMHO.

I understand your wish, cthia, for more 'even-handed' battles, but any General/Admiral from Hammurabi on down will tell you that they much prefer stabbing/shooting/laser-beaming their opponents in the back, preferably without them knowing anything about it (see Honor at the Battle of Charon).

And the ISLN is so overmatched, unless you get something like a Squadron of Indefatigable-class BC(sp?) jumping a convoy with, say, an Avalon class LC and three old Chanson-class DD's, it's simply not going to go well for the Sollies.

cthia wrote:Okay, I was wondering, Filareta's Operation Raging Justice really didn't have a fair chance to succeed because there was no operational secrecy. Heck, the RMN knew the time, strength and even the name of the Operation.

What if operational secrecy would have been maintained? What would have been the outcome then?

And, the SLN only sent 427 ships. I've been admonished over an all-in SLN attack. Okay, but what if they really did throw 3000 ships at the RMN, and somehow were able to maintain operational secrecy? And this time they bring along CLACs.

Surprise! Let's get ready to rumbllllllllllle!!

OK, let's give the SL the best possible conditions--they get those extra 600 SD's to Filareta, along with a massive screen, and about September (instead of July), here comes ~1000 Sollie SD's with about 600 BCs. Cruisers and Destroyers--the largest Armada ever seen in Human space.

And say that somehow they assembled this without a single operational security leak over those several months, and to make it even more interesting, we'll take out the Haven ships (peace reigns, yes, but they don't know about the Sollie fleet) and cut the Graysons down to just a task force from the Protector's own (call it 30 SD's and 20 CLAC's).

But remember, in this revision, there is no reason Alice Truman or the other ships have gone to Beowulf (unless the SL pushes the Tsang alternative), so there may be more than 40 or so SD(P)'s with Honor.

But it doesn't really matter, because a significant portion of the Fleet is going to be out at Sphinx anyway (being it is closest to hyperspace and most vunerable), and without warning, they are not going to be asking questions or or devising grand stragems like Honor had the time to do.

Nope, they are grabbing every system defense pod, rolling every pod they have, and hitting the Sollies at maximum range with a shot much like D'Orville hit Tourville with at First Manticore--and with the Sollies unable to hit back and woefully unable to defend.

If anything, the death toll would have been even more one-sided and horiffic that the battle that was eventually fought. I mean, 60 SLN SD's did manage to surrender intact--if they got hit like D'Orville hit Tourville, I doubt there would have been 10 out of a 1000 left.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Hutch wrote:

cthia wrote:Okay, I was wondering, Filareta's Operation Raging Justice really didn't have a fair chance to succeed because there was no operational secrecy. Heck, the RMN knew the time, strength and even the name of the Operation.

What if operational secrecy would have been maintained? What would have been the outcome then?

And, the SLN only sent 427 ships. I've been admonished over an all-in SLN attack. Okay, but what if they really did throw 3000 ships at the RMN, and somehow were able to maintain operational secrecy? And this time they bring along CLACs.

Surprise! Let's get ready to rumbllllllllllle!!

OK, let's give the SL the best possible conditions--they get those extra 600 SD's to Filareta, along with a massive screen, and about September (instead of July), here comes ~1000 Sollie SD's with about 600 BCs. Cruisers and Destroyers--the largest Armada ever seen in Human space.

And say that somehow they assembled this without a single operational security leak over those several months, and to make it even more interesting, we'll take out the Haven ships (peace reigns, yes, but they don't know about the Sollie fleet) and cut the Graysons down to just a task force from the Protector's own (call it 30 SD's and 20 CLAC's).

But remember, in this revision, there is no reason Alice Truman or the other ships have gone to Beowulf (unless the SL pushes the Tsang alternative), so there may be more than 40 or so SD(P)'s with Honor.

But it doesn't really matter, because a significant portion of the Fleet is going to be out at Sphinx anyway (being it is closest to hyperspace and most vunerable), and without warning, they are not going to be asking questions or or devising grand stragems like Honor had the time to do.

Nope, they are grabbing every system defense pod, rolling every pod they have, and hitting the Sollies at maximum range with a shot much like D'Orville hit Tourville with at First Manticore--and with the Sollies unable to hit back and woefully unable to defend.

If anything, the death toll would have been even more one-sided and horiffic that the battle that was eventually fought. I mean, 60 SLN SD's did manage to surrender intact--if they got hit like D'Orville hit Tourville, I doubt there would have been 10 out of a 1000 left.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

I could have sworn that I read somewhere that the SLN had thousands of mothballed ships.

My bad.

cthia wrote:I could have sworn that I read somewhere that the SLN had thousands of mothballed ships.

My bad.

They do. Ancient, decrepit ones. And either no provision for crewing them, or no realistic one. So, if you wanted to change the scenario to include them, make it happen four years down the road, with the vast majority of the force having even worse missile defenses.

There's no way we can even consider operational security holding in that case, either.